Launching Fireballs and Arrows in Tera

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Playing a fantasy MMO like a third-person shooter.

By Nick Kolan

Swinging a big old blade around in Tera is incredibly fun, but in many ways it's virtually indistinguishable from other games that rely on action combat. Playing a ranged character, on the other hand, is a different story. Most MMOs let you lock-on and blast away, and even most action games, whether on console or PC, utilize some sort of auto-locking feature for ranged attacks. In Tera, this isn't the case.

Each of the four ranged classes – Mystic, Archer, Priest and Sorcerer – has a basic ranged attack. In the case of the Mystic, Priest and Sorcerer, it's a magical spell that requires a tiny bit of mana, which regenerates at about the same rate as the basic attack expends it, meaning if you chain-cast the basic spell, your mana pool will stay stable. Tera doesn't let you simply click on an enemy and cast spells, though. For your attacks to hit, you need to be aimed directly at your enemy, and you need to be within range, which is typically about 20 yards.

While staying aimed at an enemy is certainly part of the challenge of playing a ranged character, managing your actual range in relation to your target is also very important. If an enemy closes the gap, squishy ranged characters are going to get mangled by any hits they take. On the flipside, most of the basic attack spells grow more powerful the closer an enemy is. Thus, stutter-stepping – moving away between attacks – plays an important role in ranged damage-dealer combat, to keep the enemy close but not too close. While this technique is common between all four ranged classes, the way each class deals with enemy damage, and their role in group combat, differs greatly.

The Sorcerer is a serious damage dealer, and has some nifty spell rotations to get into or out of certain situations. Backstep, the Sorcerer's primary method of avoiding damage, moves the sorcerer back a step (if you can believe it). This leads into Magma Bomb, which conveniently throws a damaging projectile almost exactly where you just were. This can be combined with Ice Needle to slow and damage the enemy to make it easier to gain extra distance. At level 20, the Sorcerer unlocks Flaming Barrage, a lock-on skill which can target up to five enemies, dealing a chunk of damage to all of them. To target each enemy, you have to manually pass your crosshair over their body, so even casting Flame Barrage efficiently requires some accuracy. Damage for lock-on abilities like this one is split amongst each target, so hitting only a single enemy will deal about five times more damage than maxing out the targets.

The Archer shares a lot of similarities with the Sorcerer, though it relies less on positioning for many of its attacks, and can lay down traps for oncoming foes to trigger. The Archer can also fling arrows incredibly rapidly with some of its attacks, so keeping a steady aim on a potentially rapidly-moving enemy is even more important.

The Priest and the Mystic don't have dodging abilities like the Sorcerer and Archer, at least not initially. Instead, if it looks like a monster is about to strike them, they have to either run away manually, or just take the damage and heal themselves. Both the Priest and Mystic classes are primarily support classes, but they play strikingly differently.

Comingsoon...Tera WikiGet Into the Tera Beta The Priest is a very strong healer, but has a nice pool of offensive spells at its disposal too. The priest can heal allies in a specific area by throwing down Restorative Burst, or Regeneration Circle to heal them over time. The Mystic, on the other hand, provides benefits to allies from various buffs and from the Thralls it can summon, each of which can adequately fill various group roles. The Mystic is much more mobile than the Priest, and has several very potent crowd control abilities at its disposal.

Having tried all of the classes for at least a small period of time, I think I'll likely choose the Mystic or the Warrior when Tera finally launches on May 1st. The Warrior's fast-paced melee combat is a total blast, while the Mystic's wide and versatile range of spells leaves little to be desired. Tomorrow you can see how some of the classes interact in a real, bona fide dungeon.